American clarinetist/bass clarinetist Laura Carmichael was born in Fort Worth, Texas, USA and started playing clarinet in the public school band programs. She has lived in Amsterdam, the Netherlands since 1999. Her major teachers include Richard MacDowell, Fred Ormand, Rosario Mazzeo and for bass clarinet Harry Sparnaay. Other important influences have come from short-term study or masterclasses with Ernesto Molinari, Charles Neidich, Scott Anderson, Laurie DeLuca and Yehuda Gilad.
Classically trained, she has performed with orchestras such as the San Francisco Symphony, with string quartets such as Del Sol, and was on the California Arts Council Roster as a soloist. However, her musical passions have always gravitated toward the experimental and she is a devoted advocate of contemporary music, specializing in bass clarinet for the last ten years and always playing on a Selmer bass clarinet.
She has worked with many composers and performed with contemporary ensembles such as MusikFabrik and Ensemble MAE, at festivals such the Berio Festival in the Berlin Philharmonie, and MaertzMusik in the Berlin Festspele. With her duo partner Naomi Sato (sho and saxophones) she performs as Duo X; together they have won the performance prize at Tokyo Wonder Site in 2010. Since moving to Amsterdam, Laura has performed solo and chamber music recitals at Merkin Hall (New York), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Eesti Concerts (Tallinn, Estonia), Musique Démesurées (Clermont-Ferrand, France), the American Academy (Rome), and Campus Musick (Klagenfurt, Austria). Laura often gives masterclasses and recitals, and lectures on contemporary music, at universities including University of California at San Diego, Berkeley, and Davis, Stanford, Harvard, University of Buffalo, Cal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, University of Southern California, and Shepherd School of Music at Rice. Her current research involves integration of text/movement/theater/multi-media into contemporary instrumental performance. From 2008-2010 she was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton, in England. She was a participant in the SABRe (Sensor Augmented Bass Clarinet Research) symposium at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2011, presenting a lecture-demonstration "Body Gesture as a Musical Gesture Generator: a potential Theatrical Music Application of Sensor Technology”. She has also been heard in many broadcasts, including being featured on Austrian National Radio, O1. Recordings are on CRI, Albany, Phonector, MegaDisc, Ponk, Minimax Records, AK Music Turkey.